Child Observation for My Child

Child Observation

For my child observation, some people I know agreed to meet me at the play area of a mall with their two young children. I know the children's father, but I have never met the kids. The family has a son who just turned four named Will and a two-year-old girl named Sara. I was already seated near the play area when the Dad arrived with the kids. He did not introduce me to his children, but just released them to play. I had about 45 minutes to make my observations while the kids played on the spongy play area. I chose to watch the four-year-old boy the most closely.

The play area contained two slides coming out of a fake tree which also contained things to climb on. Various spongy animals were scattered around the area and there was a spongy jeep to climb on and slide or jump off. There were puzzles with numbers and shapes mounted along the padded walls that kept the kids contained. The floor was also made of the same spongy material. The kids were required to remove their shoes to play. A number of children came and went during the observation, but there were always several different kids for my subject to play with.

My subject, Will, has recently turned four and is a cute, dark-haired and eyed little boy. He seems to have boundless energy as he ran and played almost non-stop throughout the whole observation. Compared to the other children, Will seemed to be slightly small for his age, but extremely agile at the same time. His legs were short, but he had remarkable balance, and, despite numerous dangerous situations, he never fell once. His father had dressed him in a bright orange shirt and jean shorts. His father confided that they usually dressed Will in bright colors so they could keep track of him as he is a very active child. I soon found that assessment to be correct. During the observation, Will played by himself at times, but he spent most of his time with small, constantly changing groups of children. These groups were comprised of a mix of males and females mostly his own age or older. He was not interested in playing with his younger sister who stayed near their father unless his father specifically asked him to do something with her.

As mentioned his gross motor skills were quite good.

I had the opportunity to watch Will jump, run, climb, and slide. He quickly transitioned from one activity to another and was very sure-footed. Although he was actively playing most of the time, he paused for a few minutes at the puzzles on four separate occasions which gave me the opportunity to observe his finer motor skills. The one puzzle that Will played with the most involved moving pegs around in various slots by color. He used his left hand the most frequently to do this and had little trouble in getting the pegs into the appropriately colored slots. Another game involved spinning large blocks with various shapes on them to line up a row of matching shapes. Will only played with this once and did not seem to grasp the point of this game as he just used both hands to spin the blocks as fast as he could.

Most of Will's time in the play area was spent in active play. For the most part, he played happily whether by himself or with other children. I noticed that he frequently smiled and giggled especially when he and the other children were actively engaged in play. There were a few minor moments of temper when the play did not go Will's way. Once, an older boy pushed him out of the line for the slide and another time he had a minor collision with a girl about his age. In both cases, Will stomped his left foot to indicate his displeasure and his normally happy face became wrinkled and angry. These episodes lasted only a moment before he was again playing seemingly without any memory of what had happened.

These were two of the rare times when Will looked in his father's direction. In these cases he was looking for sympathy and some kind of backing for the supposed injustices. However, other than these moments, Will did not seek approval or acknowledgement from his father. Will seemed confident in what he was doing and so engaged in the activity that his father was almost non-existent to him. Three times during the observation, his father had to call Will back to him because his behavior was becoming too aggressive or Will was threatening to go outside of the boundaries of the play area. In those instances, Will's father made him come back to him and play nearby with his young sister for a few minutes before being re-released to play on his own. I noticed that the father was firm about these brief timeouts. In all three cases, he explained to Will what he had done wrong. Will seemed to comprehend what was being said to him at the time and certainly did not enjoy being pulled out of the more active play. Using Baumrind's theory of parenting styles, it would seem that Will's parents were authoritative in style. However, being a four-year-old Will was back by his father's side within 10 minutes or so for the same or a similar offense.

The returns to his father were some of the few moments when Will spoke. During play, he rarely spoke to the other children except to yell "boom" or "bang." While he was speaking to his father and trying to explain his behavior, he seemed to have trouble getting the words out in a coherent pattern or with normal usage. For instance, I heard him say "Me jump off dat hire truck." Obviously, his pronoun use was incorrect and he had trouble with the letter "f" and combination "th." The "s" sound also caused trouble for him when he tried to say "snake" and address his sister, Sara. (Will's father did tell me later that Will is already enrolled in weekly speech therapy to address some of these problems and that he did not speak until nearly three and a half years old.)

As I have indicated the play was very active involving a great deal of running, jumping and climbing. I noticed that when Will was playing by himself he was concerned with running in a pattern between certain animals. There was a hippo, an alligator, a lion, and a snake. He ran back and forth between these, stood on the heads of the animals and jumped to the ground. Then, he would start over again. However, he seemed to be a pretty social creature that other kids were drawn to. Other kids started going between the animals in a similar way to Will from watching him. These were kids who seemed to be slightly younger and of the same age as Will.

A couple times Will became a part of a group of children that was already formed. He was not shy when joining these groups; he simply started doing what they did and was quickly accepted. The most popular group game became jumping off of a jeep. The jeep was about three feet tall at the highest point. Kids would climb up the back over the bumper and spare tire, stand on the top for a moment and jump to the spongy ground. They repeated this pattern several times when there was a mix of boys and girls involved. After a few rounds of that the girls moved on to another activity and Will and five other boys continued to play on the jeep. Soon, the game changed from jumping off to knocking off - a kind of king of the hill game. The game further progressed to shooting each other off the top of the jeep with their fingers as they yelled "bang"